Mitchell:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

LeGuin:

The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed;
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.

So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

Feng/English:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

Legge:

The Dao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Dao.
The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth;
(conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things.
Always without desire we must be found,
if its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development takes place, it receives the different names.
Together we call them the mystery.
Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.

Susuki:

The Reason that can be reasoned is not the eternal Reason.
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The Unnamable is of heaven and earth the beginning.
The Namable becomes of the ten thousand things the mother.
Therefore it is said: “He who desireless is found
The spiritual of the world will sound.
But he who by desire is bound
Sees the mere shell of things around.”
These two things are the same in source but different in name.
Their sameness is called a mystery.
Indeed, it is the mystery of mysteries.
Of all spirituality it is the door.

Goddard:

The Dao that can be understood cannot be the primal, or cosmic, Dao, just as an idea that can be expressed in words cannot be the infinite idea.
And yet this ineffable Dao was the source of all spirit and matter, and being expressed was the mother of all created things.
Therefore not to desire the things of sense is to know the freedom of spirituality; and to desire is to learn the limitation of matter.
These two things spirit and matter, so different in nature, have the same origin. This unity of origin is the mystery of mysteries, but it is the gateway to spirituality.

Notes:

Ironic how close this was to how Jay and I used to talk about nothing. You can’t describe nothing; the second you do, it becomes something. And yet, we all know what nothing is.

I’m not sure I like the darkness within darkness; it’s poetic, but Leguin’s mystery within mystery keeps the amorphous ethereal nature of it clear. I like Leguin’s version better here; Mitchell’s the name is the thing is too mystic.

The unwanting see the mystery because they’ve realized it’s not something that can be had, and yet, is everything; we both simultaneously can’t possess it, and yet, it’s part of everything. That’s the mystery, and it’s real.

When you think about where everything comes from… and how it got there; it’s analogous to Amatka, where things have to be named to keep form or they all fall back into the formlessness of the base element of creation.

All but our selves in that case, but in reality, we too, are a consequence of the Unmanifested. We are the named things, like everything around us. Only the unnamed, unmanifested, whatever, is not, nor could it be, because then, like nothing, it would be something. And yet, it’s everything.

The Feng-English translation is more cryptic, but I like that there’s not quite the same stigma on ever desiring as the Mitchell or Leguin versions. After all, desire is not necessarily bad. Mitchell and Leguin seem to suggest with their translation that if you’re desiring, you can’t see the Tao (the path, the way). You are somehow lesser than, more unenlightened.

The Feng-English translation is more straightforward; the two do not preclude each other. Desiring and seeing the manifestations (things as they are) are just part of it. Desireless, you see the mystery within a mystery, the darkness within darkness, (also, things as they really are), another part of it, that can connect you to the whole, not forgetting that the whole also includes desire and manifestation.

This is the key, the gate. When Leguin calls it the Aleph, she is not wrong.

Legge projects too much in trying to find rhymes; his version sounds more dictatorial, more of a mandate than a mystery. Like, you MUST be undesiring if you want any hope of finding the path, the way. Of finding the Tao.

But the Tao is everywhere and everything; its manifestations are not forever unchanging. They change, it’s all part of it. It’s all Tao, and that’s the kind of the point. Dropping the desire for it to be something specific is where one can get the full picture – that’s what undesiring gets you. But that Tao is in a diamond as it is in a lump of coal, as it is in us. It is all manifestation, all Tao. We accept it as it is to see that.

Mystery of mysteries again, in Susuki, though the idea of Reason being the analog for the Way is like Rand redux, and so, not exactly much of a thought for me. We’ve all seen how that’s worked out.

Selfishness as virtue? It was practically begging to be co-opted by the truly greedy to justify all their shitty behaviour, while missing the point entirely of an independent mind. Logic would not surely avoid every man for himself.

Anyway, outside the point here.

I like Susuki’s note about being bound by desire seeing only the shell; he brings it back to completeness by noting it’s all the same source.

Again, the rhyming. I somehow doubt that’s in the original.

I don’t like Goddard’s version of putting all understanding of Tao beyond our reach (because it’s not; it just can’t be expressed). I do like his use of word ineffable, and I love the idea that “being expressed was the mother of all created things”.

Like there’s this great thing behind the thing, not of the thing, under and through it, all around it, it is it itself, and when it is expressed, it births everything we see. It’s a joyful thought. I also adore the idea that in our desire for things, we learn the limitations of matter. Each is only a piece of the whole, and therefore limited, and yet, being of the whole, entirely infinite.

Such is the Tao.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 695 words, comic: The Stuff #4

Read: The Robber Bridegroom, Eudora Welty
Comics: Fairest 24-26, Fables 140
Music: 20/20 Division, Anti-Flag